The central event of Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart is Jinx Fairchild's murder of Little Red Garlock while Iris Courtney, the girl Garlock has been chasing, watches.

Like Marya (1986) and You Must Remember This (1987), Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart examines the connection between adolescence and violence, and, like them, it is more controlled and purposeful in its intent than Oates's early fiction. Iris Courtney's journey from her adolescence in the small upstate New York city of Hammond to Syracuse University replicates Marya's journey. Like Marya, Iris protects herself from the scars of her father's drinking and gambling, of her mother's alcoholism and promiscuity, and of her parents' eventual divorce by adopting a cold, shell-like exterior. Despite its bleak view of the quality of life in mid-twentieth-century America, Oates finds a way of endorsing...